Over the years, I would hear many versions of what happened. Only two facts would be clear: The generator had started smoking. Sajan was asphyxiated by the smoke.
The first version transmitted across the grapevine was the one that would be bandied about as the truth. An area behind the golf course was off-limits to children and bereft of cameras, an area that contained all our ‘dangerous’ equipment—the sewage treatment plant, a central water softening unit, the large generator that made up for erratic power supplies from the state utility. These machines were housed inside concrete blocks and were locked at all times, with heavy green doors that had red ‘DANGER—KEEP OUT’ signs posted on them. The buildings were supposed to be guarded at all times by one or two security guards.
For some reason, that evening the place had not been guarded. Sajan and six other children, ranging in age from four to ten, had left the party after their fill of cake and sandwiches. I couldn’t really blame Kalpana for that. After all, our kids were accustomed to scampering around our highly-guarded complex. What could go wrong, we thought, with so many guards and CCTV cameras?
The kids had headed into the danger zone which housed the gurgling machines, of which the generator hissed and sputtered the loudest. Apparently, the boys, all Batman fans, had spun a story about terrifying villains that could, at the slightest provocation, emerge from their hissing habitats and ravage the place. The sewage treatment plant held Clayface. The water softener housed the evil Catwoman. The generator, a scary Ventriloquist.
Of all the creatures, the Ventiloquist’s den drew more interest, because the door also carried the sign: ‘FIRE HAZARD’. Several boys took turns running up to the concrete wall on the left side, where a gulmohar’s branches crisscrossed the grilled window, calling out to the villain in their loudest voices: ‘Wake up, idiot Ventri.’ ‘Get up, you voice-throwing moron.’ The Ventriloquist responded by hurling his hiss at the opposite corner. The adventurers grew bolder.
Armed with white pebbles from the rainbow garden, our brave warriors hit the metallic sides of the Fantasia generator with clanging sounds. Soon the room started smoking fiercely, with greyish black fumes billowing out of the window. The kids sensed the heat radiating from the room and the sizzling danger of a fire about to erupt. So they ran. But one little boy continued to stand by the villain’s lair. The metal door had been propped ajar for some reason, and the boy fell into the smoky room.
An Arcadia maid happened to be passing by and encountered a pungent smell. When she saw the kid lying there and the room likely to erupt soon, with the machine inside roaring and flames leaping up behind the grilled window, she didn’t stop to think. She whisked the boy up, and rushed him towards the nearest villa—and from there, they finally carted him to ours. He had already stopped breathing by then. Our little angel, our Sajan.
For a few months, I stayed trapped. A frozen fish, inside icy waters. I moved about, getting through my everyday routines: waking, eating, washing up. But mainly sitting still. Everything around me seemed magnified, too big, too loud, too dazzlingly bright. For instance, this fly on the bedroom glass. Its buzz in my ears as deafening as a helicopter’s whir. The eyes fixing me with their enormous, glassy stare. Or a ball of hair, floating across the bathroom floor, threatening to taint my feet.
Our neighbours rallied around, proffering comfort foods—sponge cakes, curries, casseroles. Visiting us every so often, sitting by our sides in as companionable a silence as possible. Manas had dispatched Rhea to Kolkata, entrusting her to the care of my father and stepmother, while we recovered.
Manas was the first to surface from our subterranean existence; he needed to get back to work. At least he had that, insistent investors, cajoling colleagues. I couldn’t dream of getting back to my origami. How could I create shapes, when everything around me had folded up?
After a few months, the ice started cracking. The return of feeling more agonising than the numbed early months. I hadn’t realised till then, how physical the ache could be. Especially at night, while spasms ballooned in my chest and streamed through my abdomen, hollowing me out, turning me breathless. I was flooded by suicidal thoughts: take me away, Sajan, please take me away. Sometimes, I felt like my skin had turned visibly porous, the sadness leeching into my sheets. I felt damp and sweaty, hot and cold.
Then my childhood nightmares started returning. Through my school years, I had been beset by dreams that centred around imaginary people and events. Now the nightly scenes were haunting me again. I thought my son’s death must have dredged them back into my consciousness.
In those scenes, that repeated like a tape on rewind, three children were at play. One was an ebony-coloured girl called Mira. The second child in the group was a boy. He was plump and scampered about in tiny shorts. He was unnamed and featureless, but always around. The third child was me. The kids darted around a garden I had never lived in, with clumpy hibiscus bushes and leafy mango trees, under the watchful gaze of a dark, hovering figure. Sometimes, I heard an adult’s voice, calling out our names: ‘Vedika’, ‘Mira’ Those dreams always ended in a ghastly manner, with a child screaming horrifically, as if she were being mangled alive. All this followed by the baffling but also immensely frightful image of a grinning doll, strung up on a tree. As a child, I had woken up from those visions, shaken and sweaty, screaming for Ma and Baba to fetch me from my room.
The nightly images were analysed, at first by my parents and later on by a school counsellor. Ma and Baba were certain I had never lived in such a garden, or even befriended a girl called Mira. ‘It’s all in your head, Vedika. Creative people often have violent dreams,’ Ma said. The Kolkata flat I had grown up in had a concrete parking lot and no garden patch. The school counsellor suggested I keep a dream journal and write out the grisly scenes that recurred. In one of those journal entries, I had written, ‘Kantabai called us to drink milk.’ I had asked Ma if we ever had a maid called Kantabai, but she shook her head. As far as I could recall, in Kolkata, we never had any help.
Fortunately, my nightmares had ceased after marriage. As soon as we had moved to Fremont, I left those bloodcurdling screams behind.
But now, even during the daytime, that girl’s scream and Sajan’s cries welded into a dreadful sound that continued to echo inside my head. Moreover, I was seized by a strange thought: had those childhood dreams been prescient of the future? Had some higher force warned me of what was to come? Perhaps it hadn’t been a girl’s scream at all, but a high-pitched boy’s terror that burrowed into my sheets even then?
Manas poured himself into his work, allaying his grief with frenetic activity. His startup required extensive touring. To seek funding, partners, collaborations. He seemed to be shutting the past out from his whirlwind days. He urged me to do the same. It was what he always did.
How could I, Manas? Sajan was everywhere.
He crept out from the kitchen cupboard, where I stored his favourite Chocos cereal, he breezed in through the front door when his friends scurried outside, he stomped up the stairs when the school bus wheezed into our complex. After a few months, I wasn’t weeping as much, but the memories leapt out at me, from all around.
At first, I dismissed the need for any therapy. Manas prodded me into attending Damini’s free reiki sessions. ‘Vedika, can’t you see what this is doing to me? When I leave for work, you’re sitting here and moping. When I get back, you’re still sitting here and moping. I miss him as much as you do, you need to understand that. But you can’t live like this forever.’
‘Let’s bring Rhea back. I miss her so much. Talking to her on the phone is not enough.’
‘When you’re up and about, Vedika. She can’t see you like this.’
Damini’s startling presence - her husky voice, her canon shot laughter, her bizarre clothes - lifted me sooner than I’d expected, from my everyday gloom. With a bandana tied around her orange hair, a scarf wrapped around her wide hips, beady necklaces jangling across her breasts, she served me strawberry t
arts and enormous refills of green tea. ‘Vedika, there are no rules for grieving. You can grieve in any manner you want to, for as long as you want to.’ We were seated in her Zen Reiki room, a sparkling white room with tatami mats and low Japanese-style furniture. The healing couch, where I lay flat during our sessions, was covered with a white, silken sheet. Damini sat on a mat behind me, her legs crossed and her back supported by soft cushions. As she placed her healing touch on various parts of my body, softly cupping her palms across my eyes, I could sense the ‘ki’ or ‘life-force’ as she called it, flowing in and out of me. A silken print framed in bamboo, with pink and white cherry blossoms, was the only patch of colour in the room. The room also held an incongruous chest of drawers, painted in ivory. ‘What does it contain?’ I asked, once.
‘My stationery, darling. Calligraphy instruments.’
At the far end, inset into the wall, hung a brass gong. She hit it, sometimes, at the end of a session, as if to mark our time together. Perhaps, because it evoked temples and monasteries, the echoing sound diffused the somber notes I carried inside me.
Sometimes, we talked. She withstood my whines (‘Why me? Why was I picked among all the mothers?’), my anguished cries (‘I shouted at him for messing up the front door mat. Now I’d do anything to see that mat messed up again’), my confessions (‘I used to resent it when he wanted to feed at midnight, and then again at 2 a.m.’). Each time, Damini merely nodded, with a sage, ‘I know, darling, I know.’ She chided me for being too harsh on myself. ‘No parent is perfect, you did the best you could.’
Other times, she infused hope. ‘You’re going to meet him again, Vedika, in the next life. You must remember, he is bound to you for eternity. You have to live the best life you can, for his sake. And for your daughter’s, she still needs you.’
One time, I admitted my concerns about Sajan’s fogginess. ‘I feel so guilty about letting him go that day. I should have held him back, protected him.’
‘Darling, I have an intellectually disabled brother. My mother died early, my father did the best he could. But we all have our limitations, so we can’t beat ourselves up if we fall short sometimes.’
Something about her words or the soft expression in her eyes shook me. But they exhorted me to try harder, to tug myself out of the swirling anguish.
On a business trip to Kolkata, Manas brought Rhea back. My daughter carried a shaft of sunshine into the household. Just the sight of her round face each morning buoyed me like nothing else could. She was still confused and betrayed by the absence of her brother. She often referred to his impending return, and I wished I could share her hopeful vision of the future. I distracted myself by tending to her needs, scouting around for the best kindergarten schools.
She also had a new yearning. ‘Please Mama, can’t we get a dog?’ I shouldn’t have been surprised. My daughter always had an affinity towards all creatures. Feral cats gathered in our backyard, to lap up her platters of milk. A few littered inside our recycling bin, their fragile kittens shielded from predators by their watchful patron. A baby squirrel with a broken leg was nursed back to health. She was particularly fond of dogs. Never having grown up with a pet myself, I wasn’t confident about raising a dog. But I couldn’t ignore the change in her demeanour, especially the despondent look when she passed Sajan’s room. On a morning walk, I asked Hansika if Rhea could play with her black dachshund.
‘Vedika, absolutely. You don’t even need to ask. She’s welcome at any time.’ Moments like this, moments when my neighbours so readily responded to our needs, bolstered my attachment to our community. Whom would we turn to if we ever left this place? There was nothing like it in today’s ruthlessly indifferent cities.
Rhea started visiting Hansika’s home often, to help with doggy activities. She always returned with a heartening flush on her face: ‘Today we shampooed Topsy, now his fur’s so glossy,’ or ‘Today Topsy caught the ball, then he chewed it up.’ One evening however, she returned from a doggy run with her lips droopy, her eyes inflamed with sadness: ‘What happened Rhea, why are you so sad?’
‘Topsy’s not well. He’s so tired, he can’t even run?’
‘Really? Has Auntie taken him to the vet?’
‘The doctor gave some medicine. But he’s not okay, I’m scared he’ll die.’ Die? Why was my daughter talking about death already? Had her brother’s death planted this perpetual fear in her?
‘He won’t die, Rhea. I’m sure he’ll get okay.’
Two days later, I was shocked to see my anguished daughter come bounding home: ‘Mama, you were wrong. You told me lies. Topsy died.’
‘What are you saying, Rhea? He’s not that old?’ As I wrapped her little body, shaking with uncontrollable sobs, against my bosom, I was filled with rising disquiet. Topsy died?
When I called Hansika, she was moping too. ‘Vedika, I don’t know what it is. I don’t think the move suited him. He’s not been himself since we’ve returned...’
‘What did the vet say?’
‘I know this sounds weird, but I think he was depressed. He’s not been himself ever since... Adit’s crying, I need to go.’
After a tearful hour, Rhea made Topsy a card. ‘Dear Topsy, I’m so sad you died. But don’t worry, my brother will take you for walks now. His name is Sajan and he watches us through the telescope.’ I even promised to hold a memorial service for the dog, something I hadn’t done for Sajan in my paralyzed state.
The next week, Hansika and I were seated by the fish pond while Rhea darted between bamboo clumps. Adit lay in a pram by our side. Staring into the pond, Hansika said, again, ‘Topsy never liked this place, he just hasn’t been himself since our move...’ Watching those greenish-blue waters, stippled with orange flashes, it seemed incredulous that a dog of all creatures would dislike this idyllic space. If anything, the air was cleaner than the city’s, and we had vast green expanses for our pets to scamper about. Had Hansika been too preoccupied with Adit, and hence negligent of the dog’s feeds or meds?
NINE
IN ALL THAT TIME after Sajan’s death, I had intentionally evaded a key question: what really happened, that evening, by the generator? How had my son fallen in? It was too hurtful for me to revisit those hours. Too piercing to confirm that Sajan, in his foggy state, hadn’t sensed the erupting fire. If I brooded on it for too long, I ended up trapped in remorse. After all, wasn’t I responsible for sending him out like that when I knew he wasn’t completely alright?
One evening, when I bumped into the maid who had tried to rescue him, I didn’t even recognise her. I thought her face - the scar by her lower lip, the extended ear-lobes, the thrust-out chin - looked familiar but I couldn’t recall where I’d seen her. She was the one who approached me. ‘How are you, Madam?’
She bent to squeeze Rhea’s cheeks. Then, noting my confusion, she said: ‘I’m Gowri. I brought your boy home that day.’
‘Oh yes, thank you.’ Imprisoned in my own grief, I hadn’t thought about this woman, about the reward she might have expected. I should have sought her out and compensated her for risking her own life. ‘You tried to save him, I appreciate that. You must come home. I want to give you …’
‘Madam, I have been thinking of you every day. What happened that day was the worst...’ Behind us, the forest cast a dappled shadow on the pathway. The day’s natural light was fading, and across from us, the streetlights flared into an effulgent yellow.
‘Yes?’ I said, but averted my gaze. She was going to tell me about my son’s fogginess, and rupture my fragile composure. I didn’t want to hear her, because what was the point? She stayed silent, expecting me to goad her into talking. Did she expect me to say, ‘I shouldn’t have let him go, he wasn’t well.’ I looked up at the oranges melting into the darkening skies and said: ‘It was an accident, he fell into the smoke—’
‘Madam, your son did not fall into the smoking room. I heard him screaming from Villa 76, those other children did it to him.’
I looked at
her in surprise. ‘What do you mean, Gowri?’
‘Madam, I couldn’t save him...’
‘You said, he didn’t fall in?’ I said.
‘Didn’t my Madam tell you?’ Her tone was surprised, almost offended.
‘Tell me what?’
‘They put him inside.’ Just then, a flutter of squawking parrots emerged from the treetops, tattering the evening hush. Rhea let go off my hand to scamper towards them with an excited ‘Birdie, birdie.’
‘What are you saying, Gowri?’
‘Madam, when I ran to that room it was already too late.’
Put him in. What did she mean? Had they pushed him into that smoking cavern? Just three words, but it was like a machine had rumbled through my innards, forklifting me once more, from one bizarre reality to another.
When I addressed Gowri again, my voice was trembling: ‘Gowri, I want you to come home. I need to talk to you, privately.’
‘Madam, tomorrow evening,’ she said. ‘Today I have to hurry home and cook dinner.’
The next evening, I waited for Gowri to reappear. In the hours leading up to our appointment, I couldn’t focus on anything else. My thoughts clawed into the past, prying open boxes that I had deliberately shut. I was flooded by images of Sajan: the week he had been bullied in his kindergarten classroom; the morning he had slipped on a wet tile and grazed his forehead; the day a teacher had scolded him for losing a notebook. Each time, I had been the protector who got him a reprieve. Yet, where had I been, when he needed me most?
I recalled other snatches from that dreadful evening, overlapping voices, a medley of faces. ‘Six boys,’ ‘Playing,’ ‘Accident.’ If what Gowri said was true, then my son hadn’t died in an accident. Put in, she said. What did that mean? Had he been pushed deliberately? And by whom? It was difficult to wrap my mind around such shadowy images and yet I couldn’t think of anything else. Was the woman implying that my son had been murdered?
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